Spectacular Spider-Man in the 1990s
And here we are at the 90s era of Spectacular Spider-Man. It was the tail end of Gerry Conway’s run on the title and after Acts of Vengeance wrapped up he went on to do… Not much. Issue #161-163 wrapped up the on-going Joe Robertson storyline where he gets pardoned for his past crimes and allow things go back to the status quo. He also used this story to have Carrion and Hobgoblin team-up against Spider-Man, further cementing the idea that Miles Warren didn’t create clones but created bio-duplicates, an idea that they would have to walk back on a few years later.
Issues #165-172 were all dull issues with Spider-Man fighting two new British villains, being tricked into fighting the Avengers by the Space Phantom and battling the Puma. It also featured a b-plot about Mary Jane being tempted into having an affair with a guy named Jason Jerome. It was a lame “will-they-or-won’t-they” moment where Mary Jane lures him into her apartment to show off a bunch of pictures of Mary Jane with her husband. That’ll show him! It was such a stupidly executed plot that I wanted to share just to show how poor Conway’s story telling got on this title. The next arc (issues #173-175) was a Doctor Octopus story that needed multiple writers to finish because Conway was shifted off the title.Kurt Busiek wrote issues #176-177. It was about a woman named Corona and Spider-Man trying to stop her from ending up in corporate hands and failing. It’s kind of bleak and not the usual thing you’d expect from Busiek.
Now I know what you’re saying: You know what a fun-loving hero like Spider-Man needs? A lot of depressing stories! Well if that’s you, then you’re in luck because J.M. DeMatties was put on as regular writer for the duration of the title.
His first order of business was doing a follow up to his popular story, Kraven’s Last Hunt. What was it everyone loved about Kraven’s Last Hunt? Was it the dynamic between Spider-Man and Kraven the Hunter? The psychological mind fuck of being buried alive? A man’s descent into madness? A popular villain trying their part at being Spider-Man? Well according to J.M. DeMatties the big draw of the title was the feral rat-man, Vermin. For seven drawn-out months DeMatties gave us “The Child Within”, a story that featured Spider-Man trying to track down and bring Vermin to justice. If you wanted seven issues to tackle Spider-Man’s feelings of abandonment by is biological parents then this is the story arc for you! Oh, and it also featured Harry Osborn descending into madness and becoming the Green Goblin again, so there’s that. I’ve said before how DeMatties loves to write about abandonment issues, so I’ll refrain from repeating myself here. I guess if there was anything of value that came out of this plotline was a new Goblin as well as the introduction of Ravencroft Institute and it’s head doctor Ashley Kafka who would become a regular part of Spider-Man stories in the 90s.
This was followed by a series of three-part stories: “Funeral Arrangements” about the Vulture getting final revenge on Gregory Bestman, the guy who screwed him out his inventions, and “Eye of the Puma” which had the Black Crow test Spider-Man and the Puma. Then we have “Death of the Vermin”, because DeMattis cannot get enough of the character. At least in that story, it had Spider-Man working with Ashley Kafka to cure Vermin and have him return to human form. This would last well into the 2000s when the character is reverted back into a rat-man, but at least they weren’t the central focus of a depressing story about child abandonment and mommy issues. This gets to be a recurring theme in DeMattis run to the point it gets fucking irritating. I guess if you can make a living putting your issues on the printed page instead of paying a psychologist you’re laughing all the way to the bank before going home to cry.
DeMattis next three-part arc is one of the most brazen X-Men crossovers of the era with each issue having “X-Men in the Spectacular Spider-Man” hogging up over half the title. Not willing to let go of one of his old tropes, DeMattis uses this to have Spider-Man and the X-Men fight Professor Power, a villain from JM’s days on Marvel Team-Up and another character with severe issues with his family.
Issue #200 was a special edition with a holofoil cover (ask your parents) and promised to be the final battle between Spider-Man and Harry Osborn as the Green Goblin. By the end of this story, Harry seemingly dies due to a side-effect of the goblin formula he used to get his powers. This, of course, is all reversed when Brand New Day comes around putting Harry Osborn back in the Spider-Man supporting cast as a recovering addict and not a Goblin (knock on wood). Issues #201-203 were chapters of the Maximum Carnage event and some of the visually less stunning. By this point, Sal Buscema had been doing pencils and inks for Spectacular Spider-Man for such a long time. The longest artist on the run. From here on his work gets rougher. I don’t know if its the quality of his pencils or his inking but everything just starts turning into a scratchy mess or ugly blobs of darkness all over the page. I don’t know what was going on. Maybe because he was such a legendary artist and he had been on the title for so long nobody really questioned his work. Maybe he was experimenting with changing his style. It was the 90s after all, it was the era were artists were trying to reinvent the wheel after decades of following the “house style”. As ugly as Buscema’s art gets during this period I can say at least it’s not the hideous garbage that was churned out by Herb Trempe in that era.
We get a break from DeMatties in issues #204-206 which were written by Steve Grant. Grant wrote a story about a new super-powered Tombstone coming back to tangle with the wall-crawler. It’s notable to mention because it also spelled the end of Flash Thompson’s relationship with Felicia Hardy. The two started dating in Amazing Spider-Man as part of a plan by Felicia Hardy to get revenge on Peter Parker for marrying Mary Jane Watson. Her “goal” was to break Flash Thompson’s heart. It’s not the most well thought out scheme and it went nowhere. In this story, Flash has a brush with death when Tombstone chokes him out and he decides to propose to Felicia. Hardy, who didn’t want to get tired down to begin with breaks up with him. Grant also did a two part story in issues #207-208 which featured the Shroud and was loosely tied to the Siege of Darkness event that was going on in all of Marvel’s supernatural titles of the time. This was also followed by another two-part story featuring the Foreigner being hunted by is own assassins.
Issue #211 was written by Mike Lackey and was part of the Pursuit story arc which saw Spider-Man hunting down the Chameleon because, in the Amazing Spider-Man books, he believed that the Chameleon was responsible for setting up two simulacrums of his parents only to kill them, blah, blah blah. DeMatties was writing over on Amazing, so you get how this was all just another depressing storyline. After another issue by Lackey, Ann Nocenti did a two-part Typhoid Mary story which introduced a third personality in Mary’s shatter psyche, the violent Bloody Mary. Lackey and Tom DeFalco then worked on a two-part story about the Scorpion wanting to live in the sewers. It was also where the chose to end the build-up about a mysterious stranger who was snooping around Peter Parker’s Aunt May (who by this point was sick in the hospital after suffering a stroke). The big reveal was that this was the Peter Parker clone from the 70s that everyone thought was dead and from there we enter the notorious Clone Saga.
During the first part of the Clone Saga we had Tom DeFalco writing the stories from issues #215 to 229. During this span of issues he announced that Mary Jane was pregnant, had Kaine kill off Doctor Octopus, and introduced a new heroic Green Goblin. Issue #226 notoriously had the reveal that Ben Reilly was the real Peter Parker and the Spider-Man we’ve been following since the 70s was actually a clone.and later in issue #229 retired Peter Parker from the role of Spider-Man. After the title was briefly renamed Spectacular Scarlet Spider, the title returned with issue #230 which had Ben Reilly taking on the role of Spider-Man.
Todd DeZago took over as writer just as Marvel realized what a colossal fuck up the Clone Saga had been and began walking back. By issue #237 they had brought back Peter Parker. By issue #241 everything was walked back: Peter Parker was the real Spider-Man, Ben Reilly was the clone, the clone was killed, Mary Jane has a miscarriage, and — SURPRISE — Norman Osborn has been alive this whole time and was responsible for all of this. If this wasn’t dreary enough, they also put JM DeMattis back on the title. Issues #242-245 followed the Chameleon trying to get out of Ravencroft and — you guessed it — more childhood abandonment issues, mostly that of the Chameleon not being accepted by the rest of the Kravinoff clan. This plotline also introduced the new Kraven the Hunter, the son of the original, although DeMattis stretched this out for as long as possible, leaving readers to wonder if this was not somehow the original back from the dead somehow. In successive issues during this period we also have Flash Thompson descend into alcoholism, which apparently runs in the family, and the Jameson’s being stalked by a new Jack O’Lantern, who later starts calling himself Mad Jack midway through.
This plot is interesting to bring up because it was originally there was some connection between Jack and the Jamesons, hence his personal interest in Norman Osborn’s schemes to finger fuck everyone in Peter Parker’s personal life. However, DeMattis left the title before he could complete what he started and this plot was dropped. It was later revealed in a later title that this JacK O’Lantern was actually Daniel Burkhart, the second Mysterio, and why he was doing all this sit? Nobody bothers to explain it in any detail.
Issues #251-253 was the long-anticipated battle between Spider-Man and the new Kraven. Who reveals his true identity after he fucks Calypso, his father’s old flame and then at the end of the arc murders her. What delightful fun! If this isn’t too bleak for you, DeMatties also tried his hand at some humor by having Grizzly and Gibbon trying to become Batman-esque superheroes. Think less the gritty Dark Knight, but more of a Furry version of the Adam West Batman. It’s really fucking stupid.
Issue #255 was co-written by DeMattis and DeFalco and was part of the Spiderhunt story arc. In this story, Spider-Man is framed for murder and Norman Osborn also uses this to create a new Green Goblin to distance himself from the identity. It seems like they were building this Goblin up to be somebody in Spider-Man’s extended cast but the story fell on the wayside and isn’t resolved until the early 2000s when it’s revealed, oh hey, it’s nobody, just a construct. Next came the Identity Crisis story arc which had Spider-Man adopting different costumed identities in order to clear is name because it is just too dangerous to go out as Spider-Man. DeMatties left in the middle of this arc and all of his plot threads where shunted off into the limbo where stories die when literally nobody gives a shit about them.
Issues #259-261 was written by Glenn Greenberg and Roger Stern, which saw another battle between Spider-Man and the Hobgoblin.
By this point, the Spider-Man franchise was spinning out of control and the editors decided it was time to hit the reset button and do a relaunch of the franchise. John Byrne was hired on to wrap up the current Spider-Man titles with a cross-title series of story arcs: The Gathering of Five, which saw Norman Osborn engage in a ceremony to gain ultimate power, and The Final Chapter, where Norman Osborn actually goes insane becomes the Goblin again and is defeated by Spider-Man.
Issue #263 was the final issue of Spectacular Spider-Man as the title was not considered as part of the re-launch. The title would not be seen again until it was briefly revived in 2003 where it ran for a second volume of 27 issues. The title was brought back again for a third volume, properly titled Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man in 2017 for six issues when it took on Marvel’s Legacy Numbering and ran to 16 more issues ending with issue #313
